Artist Workspaces

A few months ago, I shared my workspace and wrote about it a bit. In that post, I focused on how the room and its artist are reflections of the other. This is probably true of any workspace, not just an artistic one, but I feel a workspace and its occupant are actually more inverted reflections of the other, a ThePicture of Dorian Gray situation where the more messy the workspace is, the more focused and organized the occupant is and vice versa. My students often agree that whenever a paper needed to be written, my office was the cleanest it had ever been; inversely, whenever I am “in the zone,” so to speak, my office is piled with reference books, pens and pencils, headphones on the floor with other assorted cables, multiple empty coffee mugs dotting the space, all lightly misted with eraser dust.

From when I’m obviously an emotional wreck.

Seeing the workspaces of others is a fascinating, albeit voyeuristic, hobby. There are blogsonTumblr that are devoted to showing the offices of writers and artists and seeing how different creative people can be calms the creative doubt quite a bit.

Recently, on the gaming/nerd culture website, Kotaku, published a photo set of working, popular manga artists that––I would argue––puts most workspaces to shame (or glory, depending on your outlook). At the very least, it makes me kind of wish my office were a mess right now. I should go work on that.